Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/217

Rh Holy Spirit. The churches never taught him so. But snivelling at the end is not a Christian and a manly- death.

The effect of getting up the feeling of piety, and stop- ping with that, is like the effect of reading novels and nothing else. Thereby the feelings of benevolence, of piety, of hope, of joy, are excited, but lead to no acts the character becomes enervated, the mind feeble, the conscience inert, the will impotent; the heart, long wont to weep at the novelist's unreal woes, at sorrows in silk and fine linen, is harder than Pharaoh's when a dirty Irish girl asks for a loaf in the name of God, or when a sable mother begs money wherewith to save her daughter from the seraglios of New Orleans. Self-denial for the sake of noble enterprise is quite impossible to such. All the great feelings naturally lead to commensurate deeds; to excite the feeling and leave undone the deed, is baneful in the extreme.

I do not say novels are not good reading and profitable ; they are, just so far as they stimulate the intellect, the conscience, the affections, the soul, to healthful action, and set the man to work; but just so far as they make you content with mere feeling, and constrain the feeling to be nothing but feeling, they are pernicious. Such reading is mental dissipation. To excite the devotional feelings, to produce a great love of God, and not allow that to become work, is likewise dissipation, all the more pernicious,—dissipation of the conscience, of the soul. I do not say it comes in the name of self-indulgence, as the other; it is often begun in the name of self-denial, and achieved at great cost of self-denial too.

Profligacy of the religious sentiment, voluptuousness with God, is the most dangerous of luxuries. Novel- reading, after the fashion hinted at, is highly dangerous. How many youths and maidens are seriously hurt thereby! But as far as I can judge, in all Christendom there are more that suffer from this spiritual dissoluteness. I speak less to censure than to warn. I hate to see a man uncharitable, dishonest, selfish, mean, and sly,—"for ever standing on his guard and watching" unto fraud. I am sorry to hear of a woman given up to self-indulgence, accomplished, but without the highest grace—womanly